this is stuff you like and the new patron requested episode is Discworld
yes Wyrd Sisters yeah the animated movie wait what?
ooh boy I love Wyrd Sisters. not as much as I love some of the other witches
books but still it's a pretty good introduction to the trio Equal Rites is
pretty good as a setup for Granny Weatherwax and the fact that she meddles
but wyrd sisters is where the witches find their niche as a trio of
interferers in narrative causality. it's Magrat's first outing and nanny Oggs and
they are wonderful WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN??? well I can do next Tuesday wyrd sisters the Discworld
animated movie produced for channel 4 in 1997 is very... accurate to the source
material but I don't mean that as a particular compliment as I may have
previously mentioned in my review of hogfather
I am not really terribly down with hours long adaptations of Discworld books and
wyrd sisters is long and slow and it didn't particularly find it very much
fun especially the first half the sound design is pretty sparse and I'm not
really down with the character design either I mean it's not that the
character designs are inaccurate they're just not quite what I was picturing I
like an adaptation to you know adapt to the demands of the medium and I don't
think this really nails it nothing feels is real here as it does in my head
though I guess that's to be expected but for all that I rag on hogfather
I really believed in Susan and death and Jonathan Teatime. I believed in the
performances of the actors and that's not really something I can say here
Wyrd Sisters looks and probably is kind of cheap. there's also the fact that it's
a cartoon animation of a book which is more adult than the design would imply I
don't think that cartoon necessarily equals for children only but the bright
cheery colors make it look more childish than the book really warrants
still it has it's good points and it means I can talk about the book so Wyrd
Sisters is Macbeth with shades (you see what I did there) of Hamlet and King Lear
thrown in it's more fun and funny than an actual Shakespearean tragedy
but no less sharply insightful into the human condition and also Granny
Weatherwax is back I love you granny the novel's plot is slow to start which
carries over into the adaptation and I do like Carpe Jugulum and maskerade
better but I'm not complaining. I love a bit of gentle knowing mockery of
Shakespeare and this provides in spades it's also definitely more focused on
comedy than something like Night Watch which is funny but also really kind of
dark. it's pretty light in tone but that's not a bad thing the plot of wyrd
sisters goeth thusly: Duke Felmet kills his cousin the king and becomes
king of Lancre a tiny country in the Ramtop mountains of the Discworld
the old king becomes a ghost the heir to the throne is hidden by the witches with
some traveling actors the new King hits the country he just wants the power his
wife is a terrible person and the land is sad the witches move the whole
country of Lancre 15 years into the future since time passed normally
everywhere else young Tomjon the heir to the throne is now 18 Magrat the
youngest witch has a crush on Verence the new King's fool he also has a crush
on her the fool tells the Duke that what he needs to seal his legitimacy is a
play which tells the "truth" about what happened in the kingdom
so the fool goes to Ankh Morpork because of course that's where the
actors are and they agree to write to play and perform it the witches think
that Tomjon is returning to be king but he doesn't think that the traveling
company tried to perform the play in Lancre but the witches meddle and the
truth comes out because narrative causality is narked and Granny
Weatherwax can kinda speak spells in iambic pentameter ah a bit "the truth will
have its tumpty tumpty day"
the actors start full-on declaiming what really happened to the old king in
Shakespearean esque verse the Duke loses it stabs people with a prop dagger
thinks he's dead wanders off a cliff and really dies and Tom John is not crowned
king because the fool is Tom John's older brother look at them you can tell
they're brothers look how much they look alike magrat says and the older witches
back her up so off Tomjon goes and Verence is the new king
hooray of course the fact that Tomjon and Verence are both sons of the old
fool are not Verence the First is really beside the point to Granny and nanny
there's a king he seems sensible Tomjon is happy Verence is happy and all's
well though who knows about Verence and Magrat it'll take those two crazy kids
another couple of books to get together so I've been thinking a lot about this
and I figured out my biggest problem with the adaptation and as it turns out
the concept of adapting Discworld books in general I highly highly recommend the
book but here there is no narrator to make the sort of sly throwaway comments
which comprise about half the jokes. the voice of the narrator in Discworld
novels is a character unto himself the disc is meant to be ridiculous but
familiar so all those footnotes and random asides about how X came to be
Y or how vermine are the more careful relatives of the lemming and they only
threw themselves over pebbles or how light is lazy on the Discworld they
all add to the experience they are as much a part of the experience as the
characters themselves and the characters are wonderful don't get me wrong but
particularly in the early books I think the narrator is kind of
necessary to hold the whole thing together that's why the hogfather
adaptation has a narrator there's 50% less comedy when you take that voice
away. in most novels removing the narrator is fine because you can do most
of that work with sets and acting but Discworld doesn't work like that and so
it needs adaptation you can't just take the dialogue verbatim throw in a
couple of the footnotes and go. and to be fair it's not just people reading out
the dialogue there have been adaptations made for the medium but I think they
really needed to be a lot more drastic with it the scenes that work best are
the ones which didn't really have a lot of original narration the scene where
they invoke the demon for example is pure gold but yeah overall I think I'll
stick to the books and leave the adaptations for those as like them
thanks for watching this episode of stuff you like if you find me mucking
about with my hair entertaining look out for my next Star Wars hair tutorial
out in a few days because cinnamon buns gotta be done if you like the show and
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subscribes which are all totally free and regardless I will see you next time